As you sit doing your crosswords and reach for your mug, can you imagine a world without tea or coffee? There was a time when neither drink was available.

There’s a legend that coffee was first discovered around the 6th century AD in the Kaffa region of Ethiopia (Kaffa gave rise to the word caffeine and coffee) when a goat herder noticed his goats had more energy after eating certain berries. Some nearby monks discovered that the berries (which contain the coffee beans) produced a beverage which helped keep them awake during the long hours of prayer.

Coffee drinking spread to Yemen, and to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, by pilgrims. Traders brought the coffee to Venice and it became popular in Europe. The first coffee house in England, known as The Angel, was opened in Oxford, England in 1650 and acted as a centre for gossip and scholastic interest. Merchants and professional men met in the new coffee houses, to read newspapers, talk politics and do business. They came to be known as Penny Universities, because they cost a penny to enter and serious subjects were debated. They had a strict set of rules, such as equality of all men (although women were banned.) Swearing invoked a 12p fine, and gambling was forbidden. King Charles II tried to suppress the London coffee houses as “places where the disaffected met and spread scandalous reports concerning the conduct of His Majesty and his Ministers”, but people flocked to them.

It was Charles’ wife, the Portuguese princess Catherine of Braganza who introduced tea to England in 1662. The Portuguese had a virtual monopoly of the European trade with China at this time, and she made tea-drinking fashionable in England among the wealthy. Tea was initially promoted as a medicinal beverage or tonic, but by 1750, it had become the national drink.

China has records of tea consumption dating back to the 10th century BC. People of the Han Dynasty used tea as medicine. In 59 BC, Wang Bao wrote the first known book with instructions on buying and preparing tea – or cha as it is known in China.

So enjoy your next cup of tea or coffee, now that you know you owe it to a Portuguese princess or an Ethiopian goatherd.

Happy Puzzling!